


and the echo dropped by to ask maybe, where, when

by eneiryu



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: And the Families We Choose, M/M, Post-Series, The Families We're Given
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29084340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: A thrift store tie, a funeral of sorts. A hole-in-the-wall taqueria and his pack in a park.It’s not a good day, necessarily, but it’s a day that Corey has Mason with him. It evens out.
Relationships: Corey Bryant/Mason Hewitt
Comments: 20
Kudos: 41





	and the echo dropped by to ask maybe, where, when

**Author's Note:**

> For moreyappreciation week. My thanks to [snaeken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snaeken) for the beta.

Corey knots his fingers into the cheap polyester of his thrift store tie not once, not twice, but three times in his attempts to properly tie it, which he finds distantly funny but not at all helpful. It’s shock, probably, on some kind of timed delay whose ETA he doesn’t have access to, forcing him to stand here in front of the cracked glass of the floor mirror he’d found cheap at someone’s garage sale and propped up against one of the dingy walls of his apartment. Out in the main room he can hear Mason toddling around; he’d made noises about making them something to eat—clearly worried about Corey’s pallor, which even _Corey_ can tell is too pale by half—and Corey wishes him luck. He’s pretty sure even Mason’s inexhaustible optimism can’t find a way to combine the meager collection of cans and random foodstuffs that Corey has in his fridge, and cabinets, into a workable meal.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Corey whispers to himself, petty piece of self-indulgence, and starts trying to yank his fingers out of the gordian mess of the knotted polyester of his tie. All he really succeeds in doing is nearly strangling himself and then drawing Mason’s attention, even though Mason shouldn’t have been able to hear him.

“Sorry,” Mason says when he appears in the doorway and then immediately proceeds to realize that Corey hadn’t meant to summon him, his expression melting from a benign sort of alarmed to hangdog. His abilities had been developing so inconsistently and in such a stop and start manner that no one had yet found a way to predict them, and it led to situations like this: Mason overhearing him thanks to the remnants of the Beast’s supernatural hearing, specifically at a time when Corey had wished he wouldn’t.

“It’s fine,” Corey dismisses, aiming for easy but landing on _tired._ The second he hears the tone of his own voice he grimaces and tries to yank his fingers free a second time; a self-directed rebuke.

“Hey,” Mason protests quietly, stepping forward and bringing his hands up to layer them over Corey’s, press them carefully down against Corey’s chest. “Don’t,” he says, at least a little bit a plea. 

Corey feels frustration _burn_ at the corners of his eyes, so he closes them, and forces his whole body to slump in a signal to Mason to go ahead, to do whatever he wanted; whatever he thinks necessary. Mason gives this nearly inaudible sigh and Corey feels like the _worst_ kind of asshole, even though he knows he’s already forgiven; that he had been even as Mason had been blowing out that quiet, streaming breath. 

Mason’s fingers start to work at fixing the mess of Corey’s tie, Corey’s hands tugged gently away to make room, and Corey drops his forehead against Mason’s, his eyes still closed.

It takes Mason, unsurprisingly, less than a minute to smooth out and then fold Corey’s tie into an impeccable knot, and most of that is spent in fixing Corey’s mistakes. Corey rocks with the gentle pushes and tugs, from the balls of his feet to his heels, Mason’s forehead against his like an anchor point; a lighthouse; the North Star. “There,” Mason says, stepping back and spinning Corey carefully around, and Corey blinks open his eyes to look at himself in the mirror.

He looks presentable, mature even. The suit he’s wearing is thrift store vintage, too, but Mason had spent nearly a half an hour flicking through the options after Corey had tried to just grab one off the rack and flee, and so it’s a good fit, not just in shape but in color; his eyes look brighter, his hair more burnished. Corey feels his jaw clench against this overwhelming rush of gratitude, and he can’t help but look over at Mason, even knowing that the mess of his insides must be showing clear on his outsides. Mason smiles back, this small flicker of a thing that’s a little melancholy, and then he hooks his thumb over his shoulder.

“It’s, uh. It’s not much, but I found some peanut butter and tortillas, and you’ve got that corn flake cereal and some honey.” He looks at Corey, a little hopeful-like. “I’m thinking we just throw all of it into the tortillas, roll ‘em up?”

Corey loves this man, helplessly and with everything he is, _however_ much that is. “Yeah,” he agrees, softer than he’d intended. “Yeah, sounds good.”

They eat standing up in the kitchen, their fingers getting sticky with the honey that they can’t stop dripping out of the tortillas; Mason yelping and darting forward to catch a dollop as it breaks free of Corey’s, and starts falling towards the floor. Corey wants to tell him not to bother, that honestly honey must be _far_ from the worst thing to desecrate the floor of this rat-trap apartment, but he’s laughing too quietly; but there’s this soft twist of _joy_ snaking through the mess in his chest as he watches Mason stick his honey-wet fingers in his mouth to clean them, his eyes crinkling up and his lips curling up around them as he grins back.

Mason’s eyes flick over Corey’s shoulder, after, to the clock above the oven. His easy expression falters, some. “We should probably get going,” he points out quietly.

Mason drives because it’s the only option that makes any sense—why would they take the bus, when Mason has access to a car?—but it still makes something inside Corey prickle uncomfortably, his fingers twisting together in his lap. He points out a parking space on the street just large enough for Mason’s sedan because the building that houses the county social services department doesn’t have an attached lot, but he must mumble it because Mason has to ask him to repeat himself. _Get it the hell together,_ Corey snarls at himself, and winds up accidentally twisting his left middle finger hard enough that it dislocates with a _pop._ He sucks in a sharp, pained breath, but manages to limit it to that; Mason doesn’t notice, focused as he is on parallel parking, and Corey’s finger heals in seconds.

Out on the sidewalk, haloed in bright early morning sunlight, Mason looks more than _put together._ He looks more than presentable: he looks stunning, even backed by grimy brick storefronts with their sun-bleached advertisements pressed up against the glass of their smudged windows. The suit he’d elected to wear—Corey’s quiet protests that he didn’t need to get dressed up for this, not like Corey did, that he didn’t need to come, _at all,_ ignored—fits him perfectly, of course, because it’d been tailored to the breadth of his shoulders, the trim width of his waist. The stones pierced through his ears glint in anemic sunlight, oddly visceral points of brightness in the otherwise dreary day. Corey shoves his hands in his pockets, and looks away from him.

“Hey,” Mason murmurs, and bumps his shoulder into Corey’s. 

Corey glances back up at him, can’t help it. “I’m glad you’re here,” he blurts out, too fast and too honest. Mason’s face falls a little, but that probably has more to do with the desperate tone to Corey’s voice than the content of what he’d said. 

“Of course,” he says, blinking a little, like he’s trying to work through why Corey would have ever thought he wouldn’t be. He works his jaw from side to side, mouth pursing uncertainly, and then he squints up at the county building. “Should we…?”

Corey pulls his phone out to double-check the time, and then, while he’s there, he taps into his email and double-checks _that,_ his eyes running over the text until he finds the appointment time. He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, we should.”

Inside, the building is bustling but not chaotic. Still, Corey nearly blunders right into Mason trying to get out of a rushing besuited person’s way, Mason absently adjusting—his body awareness had gotten a lot better, lately, his reflexes sharper and more automatic—as he stares at the directory, still a plaque rather than a digital display like Corey has seen in other places, looking for the right office. “Marvulli, right?” He queries, twisting to look over his shoulder at Corey.

Corey tries to bring up the name in his mind’s eye. “I think so.” It definitely started with an _M,_ anyway.

Mason nods distractedly. “Fourth floor, then. 403.”

Corey knocks when they get there, the door already open into a cramped closet of an office that looks like it was hit by an extremely localized hurricane, towers of precariously-stacked papers everywhere and those ubiquitous generic cardboard boxes unique to office settings scattered around with the lids askew. “Um. Hello?” Corey greets, peering inside. It’s not exactly dark, but there’s a riotous fern taking up most of the window that’s bleaching out some of the sunlight.

James Marvulli, MSW, jerks and looks up from where he’d been bent over his desk, rooting through files. He blinks, a blank sort of benign, longtime-public-servant expression taking over his face as he clearly tries to place who Corey is, and what Corey is doing standing in his office doorway, and then it clears. “Ah!” He exclaims. “Mister, um. Mister Bryant, right?” Corey nods, even though Marvulli is no longer looking at him, reaching over to click around the computer on his desk. “Yes, right. We had a meeting today.”

He sounds like he’s reminding himself as much as confirming that fact for Corey, or Mason stood behind him. Corey glances over his shoulder at Mason, who’s biting his lips trying to laugh, or smile. The sight of it cracks the hardened uncertain something in Corey’s chest right down the middle, and he smiles back. When Mason reaches forward to tangle his fingers with Corey’s own, right down near where Corey’s hand is hanging by his leg, Corey lets him.

Marvulli gestures them inside, and into two rickety chairs set in front of his desk. The one Corey sits in has a short leg, and he spends a few distracted seconds trying to figure out how to orient himself so he isn’t constantly rocking on a somewhat nauseating diagonal. While he’s still struggling with that, Marvulli says, still absently because he apparently hasn’t found whatever file he’s looking for, his mouse going _click-click-click_ : “First off, ah, let me start by saying that I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Corey isn’t paying as much attention as he should, twisted around trying to see if he can jam the heel of his used dress shoes underneath the chair leg to steady it, and that’s why he replies, “I’m not,” unthinking and too honest. He jerks upright afterwards, cheeks flooding with embarrassed color, to find surprise flitting across Marvulli’s face as Marvulli stills, still hunched over his desk and computer. 

But when his expression clears, it leaves a weary sort of sympathy behind. Not _pity,_ which seems _overwhelmingly_ important, but sympathy. Corey feels some of the knee-jerk panic in his gut start to quiet. Conveniently, Marvulli had apparently found the file he’d been looking for while Corey had been distracted, and he returns them all to the bloodless embrace of bureaucracy as he drops, finally, into his desk chair; an oddly effective comfort.

“The coroner from the other county sent over the report,” he says, squinting at his screen. Corey can see his eyes darting across the lines of text, jumping between sections. “Cause of death was, ah. Liver failure.”

He says _liver failure_ even though he knows, and Corey knows, and the cops who’d found the body and the coroner who’d performed the autopsy all know, that Corey’s father had drank himself to death. Marvulli’s voice is carefully neutral and he keeps his eyes fixed to his computer screen, which tells Corey that this isn’t the first time that Marvulli has delivered similar news to a surviving next-of-kin who wasn’t all that sorry for their own loss. Corey tries to match him objectivity for objectivity as a kind of imperfect show of appreciation, and so he simply says, “Okay,” in response, acknowledging.

 _Now_ Marvulli’s lips flicker, that same weary sympathy sunk into the tired lines that appear on his forehead, beside his eyes. He clicks around a little more on his computer and then types something, rapid-fire, but Corey is ninety-percent sure he’s doing it to give Corey some modicum of privacy so that Corey can experience whatever he feels he needs to experience without an audience. Corey almost wants to tell him not to bother, but he doesn’t. Instead he glances at Mason. It causes him to rock on his chair’s short leg, and that seems inexplicably funny somehow; he barely manages to bite back a snort of laughter.

But his attention jerks back forward the next second, because Marvulli says, “Now that cause of death has been confirmed, you’re free to, ah, claim the body and—”

“Claim the body…?” Corey interrupts, baffled. He meets Marvulli’s eyes when Marvulli startles a little and looks at him, eyebrows just slightly raised. “No, I. I mean, I wasn’t planning on—on holding a _funeral_ or anything, I—” He stammers, and then _finally_ manages to cut himself off. He swallows. “Can’t I just—have him cremated _there?_ ” He wonders, a little desperately. He glances at Mason, who gives him an encouraging quirk of his lips. “I mean, that can’t be _that_ expensive, right?”

But the look on Marvulli’s face when Corey looks back at him is pinched, and apologetic. Corey feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. 

“You’re kidding,” he says, unintentionally deadpan. _Hysteria_ starts to bubble up his throat. “How am I supposed to—?” He demands, _embarrassingly_ high-pitched. “ _On top of_ the other stuff that he already saddled me—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Marvulli interrupts, his hands coming up palms out. He squints at Corey. “The cremation expenses, we’ll get back to that. What do you mean _other stuff?_ ”

Corey forces himself to suck in and then huff out a deep breath. He arcs up a little in his chair so that he can dig his hand into his pocket, and pull out a set of wonkily-folded envelopes, the edges of one side of each ragged where Corey had ripped them open. He leans forward to offer them to Marvulli, who leans forward in turn to take them.

“They’re, I don’t know,” Corey explains. “Credit card bills. One of them looks like an invoice for some kind of car, maybe. They said because I’m the next-of-kin, that I’m—” 

He trails off, because there’s a thundercloud of sorts gathering over Marvulli’s brow as he pulls the various letters free, and skims them. His nostrils flare, which is something that Corey is used to seeing but not on _human_ faces, and it throws him for a second. But genetics are genetics, he supposes, and humans are as much animals as wolves, as coyotes. He winces, and then tentatively ventures, “Did I—do something wrong?”

“What?” Marvulli says, jumping a little. “Oh!” He exclaims, expression clearing. “No. No, no, no. _You_ didn’t,” he assures Corey apologetically. He waves the current letter he’s holding around. “ _They_ did.” When he sees that Corey still isn’t following, he grimaces and says, “You’re not responsible for these. You don’t have to pay them.”

 _Hope_ jams up into Corey’s throat, sharp and unexpected. “But they said—” He protests.

“I know,” Marvulli interrupts, but gently. “But legally, you’re not bound by your father’s debts, and—” he says, his expression going a little fierce in a way that should be comical, but isn’t, “—they know that.”

He stuffs the letter he’d been holding back into its envelope and then opens a drawer in his desk, and starts rooting around. He comes up with a business card, which he holds out. Corey hesitates, and then leans forward and takes it.

“This is the number for a friend of mine. He’ll help you out.”

Corey glances down at the card as he sits back, and immediately catches sight of the _J.D._ He grimaces. “Look, I appreciate it, but I can’t afford—”

“He does these kinds of cases _pro bono,_ ” Marvulli interrupts again. His lips flicker in a small grin as he explains, “He’s got a thing for putting bullies in their places, and these guys?” He nods towards the letters piled haphazardly in front of him. “Definitely bullies.”

Corey stares at him, and has to consciously concentrate on not crushing the card in his hand. “Thank you,” he says, a little blankly but only because it feels like _relief_ has scoured his lungs clean. Marvulli nods, and spends a few seconds straightening up the pile of letters Corey had handed him before offering them back out. Corey takes them, and tucks the business card inside one slowly. Carefully.

He hesitates, feeling somehow like he’s pushing the absolute boundaries of his luck, considering, and then ventures, “And the, um. The cremation expenses…? You said—”

“Right!” Marvulli agrees, blinking. “Right, yes. Hold on, hold just—” He pulls open a _different_ drawer, and half-disappears behind his desk as he bends to root through it. Corey takes advantage of the time to look over at Mason, who grins softly when he catches Corey’s eye and then reaches over to get a hand around one of Corey’s wrists, and then gently squeezes it. 

Corey turns his hand palm up, offering, and Mason accepts: he slides his own palm down to meet it, and threads his fingers through Corey’s own. Corey leaves their joined hands right where they are, resting heavy on his knee, and turns back to Marvulli just as Marvulli rears triumphantly back up, a stapled sheet of papers in his hands. He leans forward—his chair, which must be on wheels, squeaking a little—and offers them to Corey, who reaches forward and takes them with his free hand.

He glances down at them, eyes already skimming the text, as Marvulli explains, “That’s a petition to ask the county to cover the expenses of cremation due to financial hardship. Fill that out and email it back to me, okay?”

Corey has to swallow past some kind of lump in his throat. He dares a look up at Marvulli as he wonders, “You think they’ll…?” but Marvulli is already nodding, so Corey cuts himself off, and simply says, “Thanks.” It comes out a little rough-sounding, like even that single syllable had had to squeeze itself around the blockage monopolizing his throat.

They sit in silence for a few seconds, Corey having no idea what to do next and still off-balanced by the unexpected twists this meeting had taken, and then Marvulli claps his hands down on the armrests of his chair, and pushes himself to his feet. He offers a hand out even as Corey—and Mason next to him—are scrambling reflexively to their feet as well. “Well, thank you for coming down, Mr. Bryant,” Marvulli says, like Corey had done him a favor rather than the other way around, and several times over. “Good luck with—” he hesitates, but just slightly, “—everything, and let me know if you have any questions.”

Corey shakes his hand, and promises he will, and thanks him once, twice, nearly three more times before biting his tongue on the third. The look on Marvulli’s face is a gentle sort of understanding and he just bobs his head kindly every time, and then gives them an absent sort of wave as they finish stepping through his office doorway, his head already starting to tilt back down towards the mess of papers on his desk as they do. 

Back outside the building, Corey stops in the middle of the sidewalk. There’s not a whole lot of foot traffic but he still gets a handful of dirty looks, which he ignores. He yanks his tie loose but doesn’t bother to pull it all the way off, and squints into the distance at nothing as his jaw works just slightly from side to side. 

The thing is, he’d been prepared for this to drag on for weeks, _months,_ the bills if not the grief, and now in the space of—he absently calculates the time—less than twenty minutes, it’s over. He feels robbed somehow, even though he’d never _wanted_ any of it, had been blissfully ignorant of it until that first damnable phone call he’d received from an overworked county official, but the whole thing still feels incomplete. Shock again, probably, and on that same delay. Corey rubs the tips of his fingers over his forehead, looks over at Mason apologetically because christ, what a mess, and not even Mason’s own. 

But Mason is just watching him, not sympathetic like Marvulli had been or any other particular way at all, really. He’s just watching him like he always does, endlessly patient and endlessly invested, and Corey dredges up a flicker of a smile for him, finds to his surprise that he really means it. 

“Do you want, I don’t know. Lunch or something?” 

He can’t afford it. Mason _knows_ he can’t afford it, but he’ll let Corey take him to lunch and pay for it anyway because he understands that it’s not about being able to afford it. It’s not even about _not_ being able to afford it. Maybe it’s just about the fact that Corey wants to. Who knows. Whatever it is, Mason will let him. Mason says, “Sure,” and then starts rattling off places, already pulling out his phone to reup their time on the meter because he correctly assumes Corey wants to walk. Corey says, “No. No. No. Wait, actually I could go for that,” to his suggestions and so Mason absently adjusts their trajectory, leads them the way towards Corey’s selection.

They cram themselves into the scant two feet of counter space available in the tiny taqueria, Corey ordering for them because Mason’s Spanish may be textbook-flawless but Corey’s will actually get them a meal without being good-naturedly ribbed, having been picked up from bussers and dishwashers and other work-roughened characters nearly every dead-end job he’s had. They load up on _carne asada_ and tacos _al pastor_ and sweating glass bottles of genuine Mexican Coke, and sneak each other amused grins every time the announcer for the _fútbol_ match blaring away on the TV set high up in one of the corners victoriously howls _goooooaaaallll!_

Halfway through his third taco, Corey’s thigh starts buzzing. It’s Mason’s thigh, actually; they’re just sitting close enough together that it feels like it’s coming from Corey’s own pocket, his skin. Mason leans back—Corey absently stomping a foot down on one of the lower crossbeams of Mason’s stool so he doesn’t fall over—and wrestles his phone free. He glances down, mouth pursing slightly.

“My parents want to go to dinner,” he informs Corey, dutifully reporting the content of the text. He glances up. “Tomorrow night, maybe?”

Corey considers, but not for very long. “Yeah,” he agrees, nodding a little, thinking: he likes Mason’s parents. He likes that they seem to like him. Mason shoots him a grin in return, small pleased curved thing, and wraps both hands around his phone to start typing out a response. He’s still leaned back enough in his stool that the only thing keeping him from an awkward collision with the wall behind him is Corey’s foot still holding all four legs of his stool on the ground.

Outside, again, and the world has transitioned from a dreary morning to a dreary afternoon. Still, the sunlight feels good on his face and Corey tilts his head up into it, eyes closing. Between that and Mason’s heat along his back he feels steadied somehow; propped up. As he’s standing there he feels fingers slide along his palm, between his own. Mason takes his hand and starts tugging, but gently, as he heads down the sidewalk, the direction seemingly random.

“Where are we going?” Corey asks, frowning.

“Nowhere,” Mason says, and instead of a dismissal he makes it sound like a _destination._ When he turns around to look at Corey he’s grinning, a little secretive; a little sly.

“Well, then,” Corey replies, and lets himself be towed along. “Nowhere it is.”

He realizes where they’re going fast. There’s a park a few blocks away, just a patch of open grass with a winding concrete sidewalk and some benches, some trees, but it’s quiet; a little bit of an oasis in what counts for Beacon Hill’s downtown. Corey feels something between his shoulder blades start to unwind that he hadn’t realized was there, this formless dread that he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying around at the idea of going back to his apartment. He squeezes Mason’s hand a little tighter, picks up his pace a little more.

But Mason’s thigh suddenly vibrates again, and when he pulls his phone from his pocket to check it he curses, but reflexively and harmlessly. “What?” Corey wonders.

“Meter’s up,” Mason says, and makes a face. He looks speculatively at Corey. “I need to go move my car. You going to be—?”

Corey can literally see the park from where they’re standing. He gives Mason a dry look. “I think I can handle it,” he assures Mason; little smile tucked up in the corner of his mouth.

Mason just laughs, a little self-deprecating, but when he lets go of Corey’s hand, Corey _does_ notice the loss, the skin of his palm suddenly cold. He watches Mason go for a few seconds, off down the sidewalk back towards where they came, and then he shakes himself and heads towards the park.

There’s an old oak tree that’s been there _forever,_ as far as Corey can tell, huge and gnarled and with a trunk so wide around that it’d take at _least_ two people clasping hands to get their arms around it. It also has thick branches jutting out, wide enough to sit on; to stretch out on. Corey swings himself up with the ease of long practice, even if the memories are a little atrophied, and settles himself onto one. He looks around, then, and once he’s determined that no one is paying him any attention whatsoever, he closes his eyes and lets his camouflage shimmer over him.

He loses a little bit of time. It’s entirely possible he sleeps, since he hadn’t really been doing that the last few days. The sun is warm on his face through the leaves and the tree he’s sitting in is rooted firmly in the earth, seemingly immovable, and Corey has nowhere to be. 

He jerks back to awareness to someone pressing gentle fingertips to his ankle bone. He glances down, surprised, because either someone had gotten _very_ lucky, or—Mason grins. Corey is still camouflaged but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, so he drops it, and when Mason clambers up onto a branch next to the one Corey’s already sitting on, he reaches out a hand to steady him, his fingers pressing firmly into Mason’s lower back. Good thing, too; Mason’s foot slips at one point, but he just falls back against Corey’s hand for the second it takes him to regain his footing, and haul himself the rest of the way up, and onto his chosen branch.

“I can’t even remember the last time I climbed a tree,” Mason notes pensively, his eyes on the parts of the town that are visible through the leaves. They’re not that high up so it’s not like they’re getting a radically different view or anything, but to Corey at least it still seems significant. Based on the soft thoughtful look on Mason’s face, he’s thinking the same.

There’s a slight breeze, and it rustles the leaves, eases past Corey’s ears and fills them with white noise. Every now and then he wonders if he should say something, make conversation, but every time the urge passes; Mason sits in equal silence, an easy smile kicking up the corners of his lips each time Corey glances over, and Corey releases the words he’d been thinking of saying, lets them dissipate back into the hollows between his ribs.

Still, the silence _is_ eventually broken, just not by either Corey or Mason. “I thought you were a _chameleon_ ,” Liam calls, ambling over with his hands in his pockets, “not a monkey.”

Corey blinks down at him, thrown by his unexpected appearance. “Chameleons climb trees, too,” he points out, the retort rote. He squints down at Liam as Liam comes to a stop at the tree’s trunk, and peers up at Corey and Mason. “What are you doing here?”

The thing is, Liam is wearing a suit and a sloppily-knotted tie, so Corey has his suspicions about the answer to his own question. He twists to look at Mason, but Mason is just peering out through the leaves, a _who me?_ type of expression on his face. Corey’s about to say something except Liam suddenly makes a complaint of a noise; he’d twisted around to put his back to the trunk and slide down—heedless of his suit jacket, apparently—but he’d apparently sat _on_ something, and something uncomfortable. He looks up at Corey after he’s shifted around to make himself more comfortable, and asks something innocuous; benignly meaningless. Corey considers, and then abruptly decides to just—go with it. He answers.

One by one the rest of the pack shows. Scott and then Malia—Malia spotting Corey and Mason _in_ the tree, and immediately swinging herself up to join them, as unconcerned with her nice outfit as Liam had been with his, apparently—and maybe ten minutes later Stiles, hand-in-hand with Lydia. He’s still wearing jeans but he’s thrown a suit jacket over the top of a button-down, and Lydia’s in a dress, and heels. Or, sort of in heels. She’s holding them by their straps, her bare toes digging into the grass. 

“Hey,” she says, looking up at Corey as she and Stiles reach the trunk, and make room for themselves around Liam and Scott already there. Stiles offers to let her sit in his lap, just a _little bit_ of a leer on his face, but Lydia just rolls her eyes and sits right in the dirt, her dress fanned out around her. Stiles grins, unaffected, and lays himself out flat so he can put his head in her lap, butt his head up into her fingers when she starts to card them back through his hair. When Derek shows, still in his deputy uniform, she tilts her face up into the kiss he presses to her forehead; lets him lower himself down behind her with one leg folded and the other crooked at the knee by her side so that she can lean back against him. 

Corey looks at them all. There’s something tight in his throat and it makes it hard to speak, but still: “You didn’t have to do this,” he tells them. “He really doesn’t deserve it.”

Scott just looks up at him, head tilted back and expression _true alpha_ serene. “We’re not here for him,” he says, easy as breathing; easy as the breeze still ruffling the leaves of the tree they’re all sat around. 

Corey feels his expression spasm and then pinch, and he has to look away. He thinks about saying something in return but then doesn’t, and no one pushes him. 

Instead they talk about everything, nothing. It’s disarming enough that it takes Corey a little while to realize that someone is missing. Liam’s sat with his back against the trunk, plucking blades of grass free and methodically shredding them as he trash-talks various college lacrosse teams with Scott and Stiles, and he doesn’t look _incomplete,_ exactly, but he creates these little half-second pauses sometimes that go unfilled. Corey swings a foot down, the tip of his toe _just_ able to reach Liam’s shoulder, and clips him lightly.

Liam hisses out a sound and glances up. “Tell him to come,” Corey tells him, and Liam goes blank-faced with shock. 

He swallows. “You sure?” He double-checks, sounding hesitant but also _hopeful._ Corey nods. 

Liam grins, this bright blinding thing, and the way that his hair falls down in front of his face as he ducks his head and pulls out his phone might be intentional; a curtain to hide behind. That look on Liam’s face hadn’t been the reason that Corey had said what he said originally but _now_ it is: he grins at Liam when he catches Liam trying to sneak a glance at him, a little awed, and Corey doesn’t say something dumb and cliched like _life’s too short_ except—one time Corey had been dead and now his last living relative is. Life _is_ too short. He taps his toe against Liam’s shoulder one more time and feels a little burst of warmth when Liam reaches up and wraps his fingers around Corey’s ankle, and squeezes once before letting go.

Theo shows twenty or so minutes later, and Corey idly wonders where he was. But he lets it go—it’s irrelevant—and instead he gives Theo a quirked curve of his lips, not quite a smile, and nods back when Theo nods at him. Theo’s wearing dark jeans and a black button-down and Corey realizes it’s his version of a suit, probably the nearest thing he’d had; Theo’s apartment even shittier than Corey’s, and certainly emptier, the pack’s and the Geyer-Dunbar family’s efforts be damned. Corey watches Liam reach up and tug at the edge of Theo’s shirt, pulling it out from where Theo had had it nicely tucked into his pants, and thinks: it’s a process. Everything is.

They stay in the park until it gets dark, until it gets late. Besides Corey’s attempted deferral no one once brings up the reason that they’re all there, but they don’t need to. _I wasn’t planning on having a funeral or anything,_ Corey had told James Marvulli, MSW, and he’d meant it, but he’d neither planned this and—like Scott said—this hadn’t been a funeral for Corey’s father, per se. Corey hadn’t lied. He still feels lighter as they’re all breaking up to go their separate ways, though, like he’d managed to bury something after all. Put it to rest.

Mason drives him back to his apartment, and then follows him in. Corey frowns at him a little once they’re there. “You don’t need to go—” _home?_ he’d been about to say, except that Mason cuts him off.

“I’m right where I need to be,” he says, his suit jacket nicely folded over his arms. He still looks put together, no matter that he’d spent several hours sitting in a tree. Corey reaches forward and tugs a leaf free from his hair.

“Thanks,” he says, as he crushes it a little between his fingers, brief thick smell of earth rising up.

Mason just tilts his head. “For?” He wonders, not because he’s trying to play coy or because he’s fishing for compliments, but because he knows that Corey will sometimes deliberately misunderstand things, if he thinks it’s going to be easier that way, and this is one time that he doesn’t want to let that happen. So Corey steps forward, and takes Mason’s face between his hands—the crushed leaf dropped at their feet—and presses his forehead to Mason’s own.

“For reminding me who my _real_ family is,” Corey tells him, and when Mason smiles, he feels it against his own lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved! If you liked, please consider a comment or a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/)!


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